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Gosh, I do love Clint Mansell’s scores. Especially the soundtrack he put together for Moon. Although you used to have to be careful when listening to it on Spotify, as it would play through into the Fountain’s equally splendid OST, but then into DOOM’s. And you’d realise what you were listening to and feel ridiculous. Anyway, they’ve rejigged all that now, so it’s safe. Oh yes, I had a reason for mentioning this. He’s creating the soundtrack for Mass Effect 3! Which is really, truly splendid news. Most famous for his work on Aronofsky’s films, his orchestrally ambient pieces are capable of subtly finding their way into Trent Reznor territory, and should make a fine background for space action roleplaying. What excellent news. (Via Eurogamer)

Yeah I love the Mass Effect soundtrack. If this means that all the synths will be gone I’ll be sorely disappointed. I don’t care how good the composer is, there is no need to shoe horn an orchestra into the game in some misguided effort to make it more “epic”.

I like my sci fi synthy. But I guess it’s going to opposite way these days. They just keep throwing money at it and now scifi is no longer synthy/electronic and fantasy is no longer folky/traditional. It’s all one big bland term that’s become a blight on games “cinematic”.

I haven’t seen Moon yet, I’ve been meaning to for a while. If there’s no synths in it I’ll be getting worried. If this seems kinda bitter it’s probably because I watched the Vangelis synth-gasm that is Blade Runner last night.

Really? Because I thought that, while ME1 went with some interesting callbacks to Blade Runner et al., ME2 too often relied on standard rpg music fare. I found myself wishing it were more electronic, less orchestral. Actually, I was sitting through the new Tron movie wishing that it were the soundtrack to Mass Effect.

But to be honest, I know jack squat about music, so who knows. (Not being sarcastic, if that is anyone’s concern.)

Right with ya. I really missed the ME1 style in ME2 and hoped that they would listen to us smart people and bring back the electronic sounds for ME3 … and how knows they might just do that or something even better.
I can hear orchestral sounds in just about any game or film. I want that unique electronic music back, Bioware!

Yeah, ME1 soundtrack was pretty much the perfect score. I hope ME3 returns to that style. I really don’t care about Clint Mansell, the only thing I know about him is that PWEI were absolutely terrible(apart from the fantastic song they did with The Prodigy), and the Requiem For a Dream theme is possibly the most irritating piece of music ever written.

Can’t really be helped, since every other soundtrack sounds about the same, more or less – probably doesn’t help that many film composers hire orchestrators/arrangers to put together their doodles either. This generation’s film composers have definitely dropped down a few notches both in terms of ability and innovation, as a whole.

He was involved with Doom 3, to the point that a lot of the sounds in the leaked alpha were designed by him, but then quit to concentrate on With Teeth, although he claimed it was down to “”time, money and bad management”.
In an alternate universe, there’s a full version of Doom 3 with a Reznor soundtrack and sounds, and it is awesome.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of Doom 3’s fans, but Chris Vrenna was a huge let-down in comparison to Trent Reznor.

I actually thought id didn’t want Trent Reznor to do the soundtrack in the end. I thought the final Doom 3 soundtrack was made as placeholder, but was really effective so they settled with it rather than Trent Reznor ruining all the atmosphere with his generic metal.

Well, in both Quake soundtrack and “The social network” he didn´t put any metal (although I wouldn´t call his music metal). It was all sinthesizers and that kind of stuff.
Also, Doom 3´s main theme was a rock theme. One wich I didn´t especially like.

Pah, Clint Mansell is over-rated. All his soundtracks are super repetitious, he composes one idea and then repeats it over and over again. I did like The Fountain soundtrack but man, if I have to hear that f’king Requiem For a Dream theme on YouTube one more time I’m going to kill somebody.

I also don’t think he’s wholly appropriate for Mass Effect, part of the charm of especially the first game was the use of analogue synthesisers which was a homage to 70/80’s sci-fi – I thought it worked very well, especially that galaxy map track. The more the franchise has moved away from this sound and into orchestral pieces, the less of a unique feel and identity the games soundtrack has.

To be fair, STs have to be minimalist, or you end up with the music taking attention from the visuals, rather than supporting them. I can’t think of a successful soundtrack that didn’t revolve around just one or two repeating themes

Hes overplayed, not underrated. They should play his music less on repeat throughout the movies, like in Requiem, it gets overplayed way too much. Even tho its a decent track, you end up thinking “Oh nooo not again!”
Twas the same for me in Lord of the Rings- the theme makes me nearly physically ill these days.

Edit.
Netpunks are insane. Also, they have too much spare time:
Lord of the Rings trailer with Requiem for a Dream soundtrack anyone?
nooooooooooo00000000000000000000

Edit 2. Like this feature.
After hearing them again i´d actually be inclined to agree that both Requiem for a Dream and The Fou ntains main themes are a bit too repetitive as single tracks really…. whereas the first 3/4 of the Moon theme has got it just right….
i could even argue a bit for the rocky bits at the end as it fits with the theme of the scene.

I’m not sure whether I’m happy with this. I thought ME1’s soundtrack was forgettable, apart from a few gems. But I thought that ME2’s soundtrack was excellent and possibly the best soundtrack of a game in 2010.

I hope Clint Mansell can live up to expectations, because I’d have loved to have heard what Hulick and Wall would’ve done for ME3.

I once asked Clint Mansell and the rest of PWEI for their student ID at the door of the student union at Glasgow University. They were the band for the evening.
True story. (not a very good story, but true nonetheless).

Though I think his stuff would really work best for a darker Deus Ex-kind of aesthetic.
Something like this from Smoking Aces: link to youtube.com Shades of Godspeed You! Black Emperor-lite at the end but that’s no bad thing in my book.

While I thought Jack Wall had done a fine job previously and Clint Mansell is a good replacement, when I think of Mass Effect I just want Vangelis. Or Alan Howarth. I don’t care if it’s a shameless rip-off, I want synths.

Hopefully the credits will once again feature something unexpected but so fitting and AWESOME like the Faunts song in ME1. That really nailed down the heroic, epic feeling of the ending (or, well, the heroic ending for my paragon Shep anyway). One of the very, very few times where I think a licensed song has worked great in a game.

Hows this for a gaming convention to prevent game scores from becoming overplayed and therefore naff to listen to (after 7 hours of Super Mario Bros you turn the damn music off, aye?) :

1. Once you go to the mapscreen or whatever, only play the map screen music a fraction of the times you activate it.
2. At other times than playing the track, have some very minimal background ambience drones or fx from the game running.

Edit:
You only need to calculate the time presumably spent completing the game divided by how many hours there are of game soundtrack to figure out why everyone eventually turn the music in games off

I hope they keep continuity, otherwise this game will stick out very badly from the first too. There are some signature music pieces that have been composed for the previous game and it would be awesome to still hear some variations from them.

I hope we don’t get the Harry Potter effect where new composers don’t utilise the previous themes at all.

I’m actually dreading this. Also it would’ve been great to just give Jack and the team more money to make this instead of changing the composers to Clint.

Dunno. There are some tracks from the games that I outright love – Shepard’s theme, the map music, and especially the little flourish that plays when you complete a mission in ME2 – and would hate to see…uh, hear altered beyond recognition. Assuming that might happen.

I really, truly hope this doesn’t mean they’ll go with a generic bombastic Hollywood-esque symphonical soundtrack, because not only would that make it completely generic, but it would also kill what made ME1’s and to a lesser extent (much lesser extent) ME2’s soundtracks good, the inclusion of synths as a throwback to 80’s/90’s sci-fi movies.

I’m glad that Mansell will be writing ME music, but I hope that Jack Wall stays on as the primary composer. His music from ME1 was fantastic, and there are a lot of unused ME tracks floating around that would be amazing with a little more refinement. It would also be good if certain themes were brought back, like the ME1 love theme.

ASTLEY’S IN THE NOOSE HANG LOOSE KID LIFT THE LID ON THE CRIMES HE DID – CALL IT PLAYING SAFE? IT’S A BOARD GAME! ALL THE SAME – AND EVERYONE’S PLAYING IT! NOONES SAYING IT LIKE THIS – POSING PRETTY, SHITTY SHIT CITY – IT’S A TRAGEDY, PURE SITCOMEDY! SO WE STEAL SO WHAT SO FAR SO GOOD WE’RE ROBIN HOOD FOR THE GOOD OF THE LOSERS THE BOOZERS THE UGLY THE CRAZY THE DRUNKS AND THE PUNKS THE PERVERTS THE LAZY TROUBLE HERE IS THAT TROUBLE NEVER HAPPENS THERES BUBBLES TO BURST AND MAKING TROUBLES A CURSE RHYTHM AND RHYME PARTNERS IN CRIME GOING FOR THE PRIME TIME –
I’M GONNA GET MINE!!!

Unfortunately, poppets, Jack Wall isn’t coming back in any capacity. He’s posted on the Bioware boards saying that – for unspecified reasons – he and his team are done with the series but that there was no bad blood or anything and Clint Mansell is a fantastic choice, etc etc.

A shame but like he says, Clint’s an inspired choice. I just hope the main themes of the series make it in somehow (Shepard/The Normandy, Geth and Sovereign/Reaper themes, and Uncharted Worlds).

Bonus points if Clint sneaks on a track called ‘Not Now Jacob, We’re Busy’.